


among the walking folk

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, F/M, Falling In Love, Odd, One Shot, Selkies, Shapeshifting, Short & Sweet, Sweet-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:28:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Brienne is tasked with taking a very strange sort of prize to the Lannisters.





	among the walking folk

**Author's Note:**

> written 15 September 2019.

_Half-human he might be, but still a man_ is how Catlyn had described the creature. _Loud and arrogant, and he’ll curse you as soon as look at you. __Don’t let him speak._

She’d cast a long look at Brienne. _You’re a maiden still?_

_Yes, my lady._

_That might make this easier. I don’t know. However it is for you, remember that he is a murderer and a thief and a liar._

That was hard to keep in mind when the sun finally rose enough to see his face, and she realized he had been crying all night long.

“What is your name?” he said.

She didn’t answer.

“A man has the right to know his captor’s identity.”

“You’re no man.”

“Are you a _woman?”_ He seemed surprised, not deliberately cruel. “I didn’t know they got as large as you.”

“Walk faster.”

“I can’t. My feet hurt,” he said: and yes, his soles were cut and bleeding from the road.

Brienne bent over to see. “Why didn’t you speak before?”

He didn’t speak til she rose up again to stare at him, and oh his eyes were green. “I’ve other pains that are worse.”

“Why change out of your skin in the first place, if it hurts you so?”

“There are reasons.” Softly. “I like to come ashore. I like to ... know. And it hurts a little, yes. Like a good pain. A sweet pain. Do you know those, human?”

Green, green. The color of new grass; the color of the ocean under a dangerous sky.

“I must have it back. Willingly apart from it a little while is pleasure; being forced is violence. You have things like this. I know. I know.”

He shifted; a stick broke beneath his feet; that was enough. Brienne woke.

What had he been saying? She must not listen to him. “Get up. Walk. And be silent.”

That night it rained and again he wept all night long, the sound mixing with the storm in her sleeping mind til they were parts of a whole.

She made them breakfast: fried fish for herself, raw for the creature, both meals brought out of a trap she’d set the night before.

He ate quickly and silently, gaze flickering to her, to the noisy river, to the thickly gathered trees. Meat and scales and head and tail disappeared into his mouth.

Brienne wished he were wearing clothes. “What is your name?”

Licking his fingers, he did not answer.

“Your _name_.”

“Humans couldn’t say it.”

She grit her teeth. “Time to walk.”

“If you give me my skin, I will give you my name.”

“Walk.”

“We could stay here. I like it here. There are larger fish than that you found; I hear them in the depths. I could get them for you.”

“Get up. Walk. _Now.”_

“Jaime,” he said at midday. The skies had cleared to a piercing blue, and his bareness was pink and red and beginning to peel. “When I come to human land, when I speak to you walking folk, that’s my name. Jaime.”

“Do you do that often?” Gods, it was hot.  
  
“Not often. Not rarely. Once a moon? Twice? How often do you come see the water? How much do you wade in the shore?”

Not often enough. She thought of Tarth — its shingled beaches and bare cliffs.

“Do you miss it, when you are away?”

“I do,” she said. “Where I grew up ...”

He licked his mouth, looking sleepy and beautiful. “Tell me.”

_Remember that he is a murderer, _said Catelyn.

“No. We don’t need conversation to get there.” But she unhooked the cloak at her shoulders and draped it around him. “Hold it at your neck — like that, yes. It’ll keep the sun off you a bit.”

He did not say a word of gratitude: but he kept quiet until nightfall.

“What are you planning to do with me?”

“We’re to Casterly Rock. You’re to be given to the Lannisters.”

He looked pale, despite the burns on cheek and forehead and nose. “And what will _they_ do to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they kind folk — gentle humans? Will they give me my skin and let me leave here?”

“I don’t know.”

“They won’t,” he said. “You know they won’t. Are all humans liars?”

_He is a murderer and a thief and a liar._

“Why won’t you give it back to me? It isn’t yours.”

“I swore I would travel you —”

“What harm have I done to you — or your kin — that you would keep me in chains?”

“You aren’t bound.”

“I can go nowhere without my skin.”

“Be grateful you’re not chained in fact.”

He swallowed; he stepped nearer, dropping the cloak off his shoulders, standing very naked and too close. “If I am freed by another, if I am set free, I will hunt you through night and day, water and field and forest and the great standing rocks where you humans live, piled together like old bones. I will tear the flesh from your body slow. Do you believe me, human?”

She did.

“Then let me go.”

She could not, would not: but when their fishy supper was finished and the fire was stomped out into ash, she dreamt all night of his grief, weeping long and low.

She found him in the morning by the river. “Jaime?”

“The fish are different here,” he said without turning. “The water is different. Cold, they say, and swelling when the warms come.”

“We’re nearing the mountains.”

“I’ve never seen a mountain.” He looked wistful. “Is this Casterly anywhere close to them?”

“It’s on the water. You’ll hear it, when you’re ...”

“Captured,” he said. “Tortured, forever. They won’t let me go. Will I be able to kill them and go free?”

“No.”

Eventually, he said “At least I’ll hear the ocean.”

Rain began to fall, dropping over the trees and unto the forest floor.

Brienne fumbled at her waist, in the pouch she wore there. “Here.”

It was barely anything, an oddly shaped piece of pale grey nothingness.

Jaime stood staring: mouth open, speechless.

Brienne held it out. Her hand was shaking. “Take it.”

“Drop it first,” he said. “If it tears ...”

She dropped it to the ground.

Not a second later, the man was gone; only a silvery shadow fled through the trees.

And Brienne, still shaking, packed her fish-traps and her cooking pot, her flint and knife and bedroll and weapon, and set off south. She would not stay here an oathbreaker. She would go home.

The men caught her off-guard and still she was able to fight off four of them before her foot slipped on wet leaves and she went down, hard.

Four days later she was staring down the open jaw of a bear with nothing but a wooden sword and a horrible pink dress to defend her; that was the same as having nothing at all.

And then dropped down a man wearing nothing at all — and he lifted her high enough to grab onto the edge of the balcony — scrambled up himself — and took her hand, and ran.

Whether it was her own feet or some changeling magic, she didn’t know, but it didn’t seem more than a minute later that they were standing together, breathing hard. A grey heap of nothing lay nearby.

He had not yet let go her hand.

_“Jaime,”_ she said, tugging it free.

He was staring as if he’d never seen her before. “What is that thing on your body? It is a terrible garment.”

“I didn’t choose it,” she snapped.

Jaime smiled.

Brienne looked away. “Why did you help me? How did you even know?”

Instead of speaking, he rose up on tiptoe and kissed her. It felt like his changling-skin, it tasted like the rain.

“Why did you help me? How did you know?”

She stammered.

“You helped me, human. Did you suffer for it?”

“Brienne. My name is Brienne.”

“Did you suffer, Brienne?”

“No. Those men ... that wasn’t about you. They’re only beasts. Cruel, and mindless.”

“Beasts — yes. We have them as well, in the depths.”

Had he always been this beautiful? He had taken her hand again and was pressing his finger into the meat of her thumb.

It made her stupid. She said: “I was going to go home. To Tarth.”

“Your home. Where there are beaches you do not step on, and waves you do not swim in.”

“Not often,” she said. “And not rarely, Jaime. Will I see you there?”

For answer, he kissed her again: and this time he took her face in his hands, pressing against her with the long fine length of his body til she was hot and taut and pressing back, wanting wanting

and she opened her eyes to find man and skin gone alike

and all the long road of journeying yet to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Catelyn is too delicate to say “he’s super naked all the time, Brienne. try not to bone him”
> 
> *
> 
> i’m tremendously sad & this is what came out of it? apparently


End file.
